< Online Marketing It is All In The Timing

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Online Marketing: It Is All In the Timing

The key to a good online marketing campaign is timing, understanding when and how an audience reacts is important when deciding on the campaign strategy.

Seasonality, days of the week and even hours of the day can be analysed and utilised as a way to market more strategically.

Seasonality is obviously crucial in the ecommerce sector where the festive season is known to bring in a great deal of sales. Would you only market online during this time? Absolutely not. A campaign should ideally run all year round even if it is a smaller campaign than during peak seasons. This gives the company an opportunity to see what is working and what isn’t so that changes can be implemented well in advance of the high season. Having a campaign running all year around also gives the consumer some confidence in a brand as they become familiar with their adverts. When advertising on Google for example, the budget is controlled by the advertiser and should be divided amongst the months of the year with an emphasis on extra budget allocations to peak seasons than low seasons.  Industries differ in their seasonality and someone in the education sector or selling stationery supplies might have a very quiet December but a bumper January. Analyse sales and enquiries on a year to year basis in order to determine these trends. New businesses or even businesses new to online marketing can utilise this free tool http://www.google.com/trends/ .

Campaign analysis of the days of the week is important to understand as some campaigns perform better during the week than on a weekend. For example, business to business enquiries from a website generally happen during business hours and therefore it is best to have a prominent presence during business hours and scale back the campaign elsewhere. This information can be obtained once a campaign is running, through the specific online avenues such as Google, Bing or Facebook.

With online marketing, it is all in the detail and that is why it is important to look at how your campaign is performing every hour of the day. Some people notice that they have a peak in sales/enquiries around lunchtime and after 7pm at night. With this information in mind, it might be an idea to structure daily budgets to maximise during these peak hours and minimise during the rest of the day. It is not a good idea to switch campaigns off because people might browse in the morning but come back to buy at lunch time or later in the evening.

Much like other marketing campaigns, there are no clear cut ways to run campaigns online. The best way to understand an individual campaign is by testing different timing and to see what performs best. In the case of marketing, everything is timing!Internet Marketing Timing

Giselle Chelin

Giselle Chelin is co-owner of the internet marketing company MJ Media. She is fascinated by the on-going developments and improvements of internet marketing and aims to help businesses utilise this powerful marketing tool to its full potential. Connect with Giselle on Google+

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Over the past 5 years, MJ Media have fine-tuned our online marketing platforms, improved our Google presence and increased our website visits and enquiries. The end result, leading to greater brand awareness and a growing business. It’s been an exciting journey!

Dale Horne, Symbiotix Group

Bridgette and Giselle have managed our Adwords account for over 12 months and have always provided excellent and efficient service with a flexible and proactive approach. We are very pleased at the results obtained so far and look forward to continuing our successful relationship with MJ Media. We would recommend MJ Media to any organisation seeking to outsource some or all its internet marketing requirements to a trustworthy and transparent supplier.

Rob Schofield, Director, RJ Retail Ltd, trading as WoodenToyShop.co.uk

MJ Media have been amazing since day one, they listen, they are patient and they give advice which is always the best, they are helping me grow my business. I have seen increased quote requests from our web site. MJ Media’s work on internet marketing has made a significant difference to my business. I appreciate the hard work that they put on our marketing and look forward to continuously working with them.

Gisela Oliveira, Mozambique Tourism

Vet Products Online has been operating effectively for 12 years, but this year I thought it was time to progress to the next step of online marketing and social networking. MJ Media was recommended to me to assist and manage Facebook and Google marketing. Bridgette and Giselle are two stars in their field, both professional and enthusiastic. Their support is reliable and their turn around time to requests, queries or project needs is speedy. We have certainly benefited positively from MJ Media input and I highly recommend them to other companies who have internet marketing requirements.

Anne Mullins, Owner, Vet Products Online, www.vetproductsonline.co.za

Bridgette and Giselle have been our online partners for about 4 years now. Flexible Workspace sells office space and related services in the B2B market and as the founder not only am I convinced that Online is the most effective channel for our offering but that MJ are the right service provider for us. Being a relatively small (but growing) business, we need to be nimble and they in turn need to be ready and geared to move with us – MJ gets this. Having access to the decision maker/driver of the business is also important to me – they have a personal touch that larger agencies are unable to replicate. Finally, and most importantly they produce results – from the time MJ took over our account they have increased our lead flow 5-fold. As a business owner this is all I’m interested in – lead generation and conversion – this is the real measure of Return on Investment and they have delivered in spades.

Brad Porter, Flexible Workspace